NEA Asks Education Department for Regulatory Relief

The Obama administration has said it wants lawmakers to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education next year, but with a new Congress coming in, it's tough to tell whether or not that will actually happen.

So now a bunch of education organizations, including the American Association of School Administrators and the National School Boards Association, are asking the U.S. Department of Education for regulatory relief from parts of the No Child Left Behind Act (the current version of ESEA) so that schools don't have to wait until Congress renews the law to get some of the changes they're looking for.

The nation's largest union, the National Education Association, is also part of the push. The union sent a letter Nov. 15 to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan asking him for flexibility in some key areas.

The wish list is long—and goes deep into the weeds of the law. It includes:

*Leeway for districts on the highly qualified teacher part of the law. The NEA

Administrator called out by NJ gov denied raise

WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, N.J.—A New Jersey school superintendent singled out by the governor as "the new poster boy for all that is wrong with the public school system that's being dictated by greed" was denied a raise Monday.

Gov. Chris Christie singled out Parsippany-Troy Hills Superintendent LeRoy Seitz after the school board awarded him a new contract with pay well above the limits Christie's administration put in place, but which don't take effect until Feb. 7.

Christie told a town hall meeting Monday that the Morris County executive schools superintendent was nixing the deal. His announcement got cheers from an audience that lives about 100 miles from Parsippany.

Seitz, the leader of a high-performing district in one of the nation's wealthiest counties, was renegotiating a contract even though his current deal wasn't to

Javier Hernandez of the NY Times has some devastatingcoverage of the candidacy of Cathie Black for the position of chancellor:

Ms. Black has repeatedly declined interviews, allowing other voices to fill the void. Some have called her a second coming of Mr. Klein, often criticized as stubborn. Her harshest detractors have compared her to Sarah Palin for her lack of experience.

The uproar has frustrated City Hall aides, who feel as if they have lost control of the story line and who are looking for ways to beat back accusations that Ms. Black is unqualified, said an individual

Henny Ray Abrams/Associated Press

Robert Jackson, a City Council member, on Sunday with a copy of a letter he sent to the state education commissioner condemning the choice of Cathleen P. Black. Michael Meyers, director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, is at left.

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But a spectacle is exactly what Mr. Bloomberg has unleashed, and one week after announcing his choice ofCathleen P. Black, a publishing executive, to succeed Joel I. Klein at the helm of the country’s largest school system, the mayor’s aides are trying to fend off mounting skepticism about her selection.

City Council members are asking the state to deny Ms. Black the waiver she would need to fill the post. Lawmakers and parents active in the schools are calling for public hearings. Even some of the mayor’s supporters are questioning his decision.

The leader of the city’s teachers’ union said the furor underscored how poorly he believed Mr. Bloomberg had

It’s Official: Rich Declare War on the Middle Class

For the past thirty years the rich have been waging war on the middle class. It’s been astonishingly effective, partly because it has been undeclared. But even that pretense is now being abandoned. The President’s National Deficit Commission has effectively declared that the rich will now go after what is left of working and middle class wealth and will take whatever steps are

I’m not sure exactly what’s on tap — I’m not sure if anyone knows — but the blog The University Belongs to Those Who Use It has posted a call for an action beginning at 6:30 Tuesday morning at California Hall at UC Berkeley. (The blog indicates that there’s an action planned at UC Santa Cruz too.)

On Wednesday the University of California Regents are scheduled to take up a proposed eight percent fee increase that would bring UC’s in-state tuition above $12,000. Mass protests are expected Wednesday at tha

Are we bad in math? Probably not.

Are we bad in math? Probably not.

Sent to the San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 14

Is it true that "American math achievement trails most industrialized nations" (Nov. 11)?

Studies show that middle-class American children attending well-funded schools score near the top of the world in math. American average scores are unspectacular because a high percentage of American school children live in poverty (20%; Sweden has 3%).

Also, some countries inflate their scores by excluding many children of poverty from taking the test. This does not happen in the United States.

Finally, the "Stanford Study" only considered the percentage, not the number of students reaching the top level. Several countries that did better than the US have small populations (eg Switzerland,

People’s reactions to this report tell me one thing that’s persisted for ages in this country: We’re selectively oblivious to the plight of those less fortunate than us. Thus, “crisis” is relative.

Every time a report comes out about an underprivileged group, we get the same surge of pseudo-interest: people make calls, the media channels put the numbers in a 3D graphic, people from that group are highlighted and interviewed, a “regular” person states their opinion via email, phone, or video, the government makes a statement about it and “assures” that they’re doing everything in their power to help the situation, someone alludes to an event from the past century that’s just like this event, a stated expert from that group gives their scholarly stern advise that they’ve been

Take action to support collaborative school reform!

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

by Sabrina

In all the talk about reforming schools, most people never stop to question that they don’t actually know what’s going on in all those allegedly dreadful schools being considered for different turnarounds. Fed up with the slander against my friends and colleagues, I teamed up with a few to create a short video about what’s going right in this so-called “failing” school. I think it’s a shame to let their hard work go to waste…especially when the people proposing to waste it have no idea about what’s really going on inside the schools they run! Please watch the video, and then show your support for real school reform here.

Three in four Americans support extension of federal unemployment benefits

APA majority of American support an extension of federal unemployment benefits, according to a new poll.

A majority of Americans believe Congress should extend federal unemployment insurance benefits, a new poll by Hart Research Associates finds, and they reject the idea that deficit concerns should lead to cuts in support for the jobless when the unemployment rate remains so high.

The post-election survey, in which nearly three in four Americans say it is too early to cut jobless benefits, comes just days before the Nov. 30 expiration of the federal unemployment benefits program.

"There is deep public support for continuing the federal unemployment programs at a time when unemployment is at 9.6 percent and millions are still out of work,” said Christine Owens, Executive Director of the